The dissolution of the Second
Duma[3] and the coup d’état of
June 3, 19O7[4] were a turning-point in the history of our revolution,
the beginning of a kind of special period or zigzag in its development. We
have spoken more than once of the significance of this zigzag from the
standpoint of the general relation of class forces in Russia and the tasks
of the uncompleted bourgeois revolution. We want now to deal with the state
of our Party work in connection with this turn of the revolution.

More than six months have passed since the reactionary coup of June 3,
and beyond doubt this first half-year has been marked by a considerable
decline and weakening of all revolutionary organisations, including that of
the Social-Democrats. Wavering, disunity and disintegration—such have
been the general features of this half-year. Indeed, it could not be
otherwise, because the extreme intensification of reaction and its
temporary triumph, coupled with a slowing-down in the direct class
struggle, were bound to be accompanied by a crisis in the revolutionary
parties.

Now there can be observed, and quite plainly, a number of symptoms
showing that the crisis is coming to an end, that the worst is over, that
the right road has already been found and that the Party is once again
entering the straight road of consistent and sustained guidance of the
revolutionary struggle of the socialist proletariat.

Take one of the very characteristic (by far not the most profound, of
course, but probably among the most visible) external expressions of the
Party crisis. I mean the flight of the intellectuals from the Party. This
flight is strikingly characterised in the first issue of our Party’s
Central Organ,[5] which appeared in February this year. This issue, which
provides a great deal of material for assessing the Party’s internal
life, is largely reproduced in this number. “Recently through
lack of intellectual workers the area organisation has been
dead,” writes a correspondent from the Kulebaki
Works (Vladimir area organisation of the Central Industrial
Region). “Our ideological forces are melting away like snow,”
they write from the Urals. “The elements who avoid illegal
organisations in general ... and who joined the Party only at the time of
the upsurge and of the de facto liberty that then existed in many
places, have left our Party organisations.” And an article in the
Central Organ entitled “Questions of Organisation” sums up
these reports, and others which we do not print, with the words: “The
intellectuals, as is well known, have been deserting in masses in recent
months."

But the liberation of the Party from the half-proletarian,
half-petty-bourgeois intellectuals is beginning to awake to a new
life the new purely proletarian forces accumulated during the
period of the heroic struggle of the proletarian masses. That same Kulebaki
organisation which was, as the quotation from the report shows, in a
desperate condition—-and was even quite “dead"—has been
resurrected, it turns out. “Party nests among the workers
[we read][1]
scattered in large numbers throughout the area, in most cases without any
intellectual forces, without literature, even without any connection with
the Party Centres, don’t want to die.... The number of organised
members is not decreasing but increasing.... There are no intellectuals,
and the workers themselves, the most class-conscious among them, have to
carry on propaganda work.” And the general conclusion reached is that
“in a number of places responsible work, owing to the flight of the
intellectuals, is passing into the hands of the advanced workers”
(Sotsial-Demokrat, No. 1, p. 28).

This reconstruction of the Party organisations on, so to speak, a
different class foundation is of course a difficult thing, and it is not
likely to develop without some hesitations. But it is only the first step
that is difficult; and that has already been made. The Party has already
entered the straight road of leadership of the working masses by advanced
“intellectuals” drawn from the ranks of the workers themselves.

Work in the trade unions and the co-operative societies, which was at
first taken up gropingly, is now assuming definite shape. Two resolutions
of the Central Committee, about the trade unions and the co-operative
societies respectively, both adopted unanimously, were
already suggested by the developing local activities. Party groups in all
non-party organisations; their leadership in the spirit of the militant
tasks of the proletariat, the spirit of revolutionary class struggle;
“from non-party to Party ideology” (Sotsial-Demokrat,
No. 1, p. 28)—this is the path upon which the working-class movement
has entered in this field too. The correspondent of a Party organisation in
the remote little provincial town of Minsk, reports: “The more
revolutionary-minded workers are drawing apart from them [from the legal
unions topsy-turvified by the administration] and are more and more
sympathetic to the formation of illegal unions."

In the same direction, “from non-party to Party ideology”,
is developing the work in quite a different sphere, that of the
Social-Democratic group in the Duma. Strange though it may sound, it is a
fact that we cannot all at once raise the work of our parliamentary
representatives to a Party level—just as we did not all at once begin
to work “in a Party way” in the co-operatives. Elected under a
law which falsifies the will of the people, elected from the ranks of
Social-Democrats who have preserved their legality, ranks which have
thinned very greatly as a result of persecution during the first two Dumas,
our Duma Social-Democrats in effect inevitably were at first
non-party Social-Democrats rather than real members of the Party.

This is deplorable, but it is a fact—and it could hardly be
otherwise in a capitalist country entangled by thou sands of bonds
inherited from serfdom and with a legal workers’ party that has been in
existence for only two years. And it was not only non-party people who
wanted on this fact to base their tactics of setting up a non-revolutionary
Social-Democracy, but also those
“Bezzaglavtsi”[6] Social-Democrat-like intellectuals who
clustered around the Duma group like flies round a honey-pot. But it seems
as if the efforts of these worthy followers of Bernstein are suffering
defeat! It seems as if the work of the Social-Democrats has
begun to straighten itself out in this sphere, too. We will not undertake
to prophesy, nor shall we close our eyes to what vast efforts are still
required to organise more or less tolerable parliamentary Social-Democratic
work in our conditions. But we may note that in the first issue of the
Central Organ there is Party criticism of the Duma group, and a direct
resolution of the Central Committee about better direction for its
work. We do not by any means consider that the criticism in the Central
Organ covers all the defects. We think, for example, that the
Social-Democrats should not have voted, either for placing the land taxes
at the disposal of the
Zemstvos[7] in the first instance, nor for purchase at a low
price of urban land rented by the poor (No. 1 of the Central Organ,
p. 36). But these are, comparatively speaking, minor questions. What is
basic and most important is that the transformation of the Duma group into
a really Party organisation now features in all our work, and that
consequently the Party will achieve it, however bard this may be, and
however the road may be beset with trials, vacillations, partial crises,
personal clashes, etc.

Among the same signs that really Social-Democratic and genuinely Party
work is being straightened out there is the obviously outstanding fact of
the increase in illegal publications. “The Urals are publishing eight
papers,” we read in the Central Organ. “There are two in the
Crimea, one in Odessa, and a paper is starting soon in
Ekaterinoslav. Publishing activity in St. Petersburg, in the Caucasus and
by the non-Russian organisations is considerable.” In addition to the
two Social-Democratic papers appearing abroad, the Central Organ has been
issued in Russia, in spite of quite extraordinary police obstacles. A
regional organ,
Rabocheye Znamya,[8] will appear soon in the Central Industrial
Region.

From all that has been said, one can form a quite definite picture of
the path on which the Social-Democratic Party is firmly entering. A strong
illegal organisation of the Party Centres, systematic illegal publications
and— most important of all—local and particularly factory Party
groups, led by advanced members from among the workers themselves, living
in direct contact with the masses: such is the foundation on which we were
building, and
have built, a hard and solid core of a revolutionary and Social-Democratic
working-class movement. And this illegal core will spread its
feelers, its influence, incomparably wider than ever before, both
through the Duma and the trade unions, both in the co-operative societies
and in the cultural and educational organisations.

At first sight there is a remarkable similarity between this system of
Party work and that which was established by the Germans during the
Anti-Socialist Law
(1878-90).[9] The distance which the German working-class movement
covered during the thirty years following the, bourgeois revolution
(1848-78), the Russian working-class movement is covering in three years
(from the end of 1905 to 1908). But behind this outward similarity is
hidden a profound inward difference. The thirty-year period which followed
the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Germany completely fulfilled the
objectively necessary tasks of that revolution. It fulfilled
itself in the constitutional parliament of the early sixties, in dynastic
wars which united the greater part of German-speaking territories, and in
the creation of the Empire with the help of universal suffrage. In Russia
the three years which have not yet passed since the first great victory and
the first great defeat of the bourgeois-democratic revolution not only have
not fulfilled its tasks but, on the contrary, have for the first time
spread realisation of those tasks among broad masses of the
proletariat and the peasantry. What has been outlived during these two odd
years is constitutional illusions and belief in the democratism of the
liberal lackeys of
Black-Hundred[10] tsarism.

A crisis on the basis of the unfulfilled objective tasks of the
bourgeois revolution in Russia is inevitable. Purely economic, specifically
financial, internal political and external events, circumstances and
vicissitudes may make it acute. And the party of the
proletariat—having entered the straight road of building a strong
illegal Social-Democratic organisation, possessed of more numerous and more
varied implements for legal and semi-legal influence than before—will
be able to meet that crisis more prepared for resolute struggle than it was
in October and December 1905.

Notes

[2]The article “On to the Straight Road” was published as an
editorial in the newspaper Proletary, No. 26.

Proletary (The Proletarian)—an illegal newspaper
founded by the Bolsheviks after the Fourth (Unity) Congress of the Party;
it was published from August 21 (September 3), 1906 to November 28
(December 11), 1909 under the editorship of Lenin. Proletary was
published as the organ of the Moscow and St. Petersburg committees of the
R.S.D.L.P., and, for a time, as that of the Moscow Area, the Perm, Kursk
and Kazan committees. The paper was virtually the Central Organ of the
Bolsheviks. Altogether fifty issues were put out—the first twenty in
Finland, the rest abroad, in Geneva and Paris. The newspaper published over
a hundred articles and other items by Lenin.

During the Stolypin reaction Proletary played an important
role in preserving and strengthening the Bolshevik organisations.

At the plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. in
January 1910 the conciliators succeeded in obtaining a decision to close
down the newspaper.

[3]The Duma—a representative body, which the tsarist government
was compelled to convene as a result of the revolutionary events of
1905. Formally the Duma was a legislative body, but actually it had no real
power. Elections to the Duma were non-direct, unequal and
non-universal. The electoral system was rigged against the working classes
and the non-Russian nationalities inhabiting Russia, while considerable
numbers of workers and peasants had no vote at all. Under the electoral law
of December 11(24), 1905, the vote of a landlord was equivalent to 3 votes
of representatives of the town bourgeoisie, to 15 votes of the peasants,
and to 45 votes of the workers. The First Duma (April-July 1906) and the
Second Duma (February-June 1907) were-dissolved by the tsarist
government. After carrying out the coup d’état of June 3, 1907, the
government issued a new electoral law which still further curtailed the
rights of the workers, peasants and petty bourgeoisie of the towns and
ensured the complete domination of the reactionary bloc of the landlords
and big capitalists in the Third (1907-12) and Fourth (1912-17) Dumas.

[4]Coup d’état of June 3(16), 1907—a reactionary act by
which the government dissolved the Second Duma and altered the electoral
law. The new law greatly increased the representation of the land lords and
the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie in the Duma and considerably
reduced the already meagre representation of the workers and peasants. The
law deprived most of the indigenous population of Asian Russia of the
franchise and reduced by half the number of deputies returned by Poland and
the Caucasus. The Third Duma, which was elected on the basis of this law
and which assembled in November 1907, was a Duma of Black Hundreds and
Cadets.

The coup d’état of June 3 ushered in the Stolypin reaction,
which became known as “the Third-of-June regime”. p. 17

[5]Central Organ of the R.S.D.L.P.—the illegal newspaper
Sotsial-Demokrat, published from February 1908 to January
1917. Fifty-eight issues appeared. Issue No. I came out in Russia, but
thereafter the paper was published abroad, first in Paris, then in
Geneva. The editorial board of the Central Organ, in accordance with a
decision of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P., was made up of
representatives of the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and Polish
Social-Democrats. Over eighty articles and other items by Lenin were
published in Sotsial-Demokrat. On the editorial board Lenin
carried on a struggle for a consistent Bolshevik policy. Some of the board
members (Kamenev and Zinoviev) adopted a conciliatory attitude towards the
liquidators and tried to side-track Lenin’s line. The Menshevik
editors, Martov and Dan, sabotaged the work of the editorial board while at
the same time openly defending the liquidators in Golos
Sotsial-Demokrata. Lenin’s uncompromising fight against the
liquidators led to Martov and Dan retiring, from Sotsial-Demokrat
in June 1911. From December 1911 onwards Sotsial-Demokrat was
edited by Lenin.

[6]Bezzaglavtsi—from the title of the journal Bez
Zaglaviya (Without a Title)—were organisers of, and
contributors to, the journal published in St. Petersburg in 1906 by
S. N. Prokopovich, Y. D. Kuskova, V. Y. Bogucharsky, and others. The
journal openly advocated revisionism, supported the Mensheviks and
liberals, and opposed an independent proletarian policy. Lenin called the
group pro-Menshevik Cadets or pro-Cadet Mensheviks”.

[7]Zemstvo—the name given to the local government bodies formed
in the central provinces of tsarist Russia in 1864. They were dominated by
the nobility and their powers were limited to purely local economic
problems (hospital and road building, statistics, insurance, etc.). Their
activities were controlled by the Provincial Governors and by the Ministry
of the Interior, which could rescind any decisions of which the government
disapproved.

[8]Rabocheye Znamya (Worker’s Banner)—an illegal
Bolshevik newspaper, organ of the Regional Bureau of the Central Industrial
Region, of the Moscow and Moscow Area Committees of the R.S.D.L.P. Appeared
in Moscow from March to December 1908. Seven issues were published.

[9]Anti-Socialist Law was introduced in Germany in 1878. Under
this law all organisations of the Social-Democratic Party, the mass labour
organisations and the labour press were banned, socialist literature was
confiscated and the Social-Democrats were persecuted. Under pressure of the
mass labour movement this law was repealed in 1890.

[10]The Black Hundreds—monarchist gangs formed by the tsarist
police to fight against the revolutionary movement. They assassinated
revolutionaries, organised attacks on progressive intellectuals, and
carried out anti-Jewish pogroms.